alt Hacker News> I disagree with most comments that the brusque moderation is the cause of SO's problems
The moderation was precisely the reason I stopped using stackoverflow and started looking for answers and asking questions elsewhere. It was nearly impossible to ask anything without someone replying "Why would you even want to do that, do <something completely different that does not solve my problem> instead!". Or someone claiming it's a duplicate and you should use that ancient answer from another question that 1) barely fits and doesnt solve my problem and 2) is so outdated, it's no longer useful.
Whenever I had to ask something, I had to add a justification as to why I have to do it that way and why previous posts do not solve the issue, and that took more space than the question itself.
I certainly won't miss SO.
I will miss it but you are right about moderation. I don't know what the issue is on some platforms, reddit and SO come to mind. Moderators on many other platforms or forums seem to be alright and keep a clear head, even when they have to deal with a lot of vitriol and they get little thanks for their work.
There are probably negative examples as well but some platforms seem to be especially vulnerable. If I had to run reddit or SO, I would limit moderation to one subreddit/subdomain. No idea if that would help, but the problem isn't exactly invisible.